Woe to Live On

5

BLACK JOHN AMBROSE had a tough-thunk vision and there were no quibbles left in it. When the word arrived he went straight toward Stengel, the Federal who’d once had two minutes of good luck.

The centerpiece of Stengel’s face was colored ocean blue and lumpy from when I’d chastised him. He looked bad enough but quickly got worse.

“Dead, dead,” declared Black John. “Hanged like dogs would be if dogs were less respected. Yes, oh my, yes. They have went and done it to us.”

Black John used his pistol as a club and batted Stengel in the face, cracking him open above the brow. An animal-panic chorus of grunts came from the prisoners, even those yet to be damaged, as they sized up the future to be one of pain.

We all stood silent in the morning light, encircling the Federals. Many faces were sad, even squeamish, about the necessaries of the day. But several faces were poised with a hunger for the hot plate of revenge they’d been served. Lloyd and Curtin had been hung, then quartered and tossed onto the River Road to nourish varmints. The quartering was meant to disturb us, and in at least one case, it worked.

“They hung our comrades,” Black John said. “And ripped them to fragments.” He slapped iron on Stengel’s face and Stengel hunched over so as to take the raps on the head. Black John looked down on the Federal, then opened both hands and began to squeeze Stengel’s head. His feely search had him all about the Federal noggin for some seconds, caressing and patting, then he stepped back. His face exhibited the pleasure of discovery. “Your skull,” he said somberly, “will make a European palace for our worms, eh?”

“Uh, uh, uh,” went Stengel.

One of the other Federals began to puff in the jowls and burp. He did it rapid-fire and Black John turned to him.

“Don’t you agree, Yank?” Black John inquired. He then did the melon test on Stengel’s head again. “A palace for worms, eh?”

Burping frights racked the Federal but finally he mastered them enough to speak.

“Yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir…”

Black John reared back and kissed Stengel hard in the face with his pistol. The nose went different ways, and Dutchy spluttered for breath through a tide of blood.

The other Federal saw this and changed his litany.

“Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no…”

The scene was not good. A pink spray of misery spittled on the wind. The prisoners were doomed but trifled with. All common sense dictated that they must die, but better deaths could be arranged in my mind. It was all too near to what I expected for myself.

“Here is what your people said,” George Clyde called out. He unfolded a wad of newspaper and held it flat to read from. “ ‘War is loss, but capitulation is devastation. Good men will die until all bad ones have. William Lloyd and James Curtin were proven to be worse than bad can cover. They have perished. Their deaths illustrate our resolve. I have no doubt that the disloyal terrorists have already murdered our soldiers. I have much experience of these vermin. To negotiate would have been foolish. Therefore it was not done. Thomas B. Hovland, Commanding First Iowa.’ ” Clyde rattled the paper ceremoniously, then folded it back into a pocket square. “You should have better chosen your comrades, boys. To save our own, we would do anything.”

Black John raised himself to a stern posture and spit twice. He then said, “Have at them, boys, and make it memorable. We want them to be mementos of our resolve.”

Pitt Mackeson and Turner Rawls, whose jaw was still several colors and swollen, joined Arch Clay in administering slow disaster to the prisoners. I did not want to watch, but I did not want to be seen turning away. Howard Sayles, Josiah Perry and several other men did leave the festivities, but they made no comment as they lumbered away.

I was saved by Black John calling to me.

“Roedel, come here to me.”

He stood on a small rise of earth overseeing the action, pacing this way and that, a white froth scabbing at the corners of his mouth. “Take down this note!”

“Certainly, Black John. Let me fetch my implements.” I very quickly did so, then squatted on the dirt near his feet. “I am ready.”

“Good, good,” he said. His eyes were of a pale gray hue and had no bottom to them. “I have three sisters, Roedel. Have you any? They are as good as you could expect them to be. I kill for them. They are women and can’t fight. I can. The world knows I can. And I do. I do fight. Hard. I am awful but right. Never doubt it.” He nudged my knee with the pointed toe of a boot. “Do you doubt it?”

“No. No, I never doubt it. I believe.”

“Do you believe in me, or our cause?”

“I believe in me and you and our cause.”

“Be leery of where you place your faith,” Black John said. The oaths and laments, the cracks and smacks, the prayers and punishments went on below the small rise. We both looked there. “This is a time of infinitely shaded cruelty, Roedel. It cannot be otherwise. I have victory in mind.” Suddenly he whirled and leaned over me. His countenance had a wrathful cast, and spit flew from his lips like a nasty rain. “Take this down! ‘Citizens, you have stood by for murder. Another of your mistakes, which you have made plenty of. This ruin is yours to claim. Look at them and recall it. Remember this, townspeople: you will not escape me for long. You may fool me for a minute or an hour or a day. But you will not forestall me long enough that I forget the path to your town. No, I will remember it, and at some good moment pull you from your beds and use an inch rope to put all you oppressors face-to-face with more truth than you can tolerate.

“ ‘You have placed your bets, now wait for the next turn of cards.’ ”

The paper trembled in my hand and my hand wobbled my arm to the shoulder. I could not look up and I longed for a brief spell of deafness.

“What shall I do with this note?” I asked.

“Pin it to the breast of one of the unfortunates, in clear sight.” Black John was calmed in a coiled sort of way. “We will dump them on the road tonight. It will get read, I am certain of that.”

Black John stared once more at the killing going on, his face flat with resolute anger. Then he stalked off without a word to me or a shout or a glob of spit coming from him.

The knot of men, crouched, half bent or standing, who encircled the unfortunates, parted for me. There were many heavy breaths being drawn, and Pitt Mackeson sucked on a sore knuckle.

“I have a letter,” I said. “A note. Black John wants it pinned on one of them.”

I looked down at the Federals. A violent rapture had caught up with them. I had seen harsh errands performed before, but not like this. Some dark appetites had been brought forth in this spectacle, and my comrades had revealed themselves to be near wizards at unpleasantries.

And yet one of the Federals breathed. It was an exercise he was about beyond performing, and he strained in the effort.

I was all confused up in my sensations. I just stood there.

Arch was knelt down going through pockets. He had a handful of letters he’d taken from the doomed. He jerked open the shirt of the live one and recovered a letter hidden there, then thumped his fist on the bare chest.

“Pin it on him,” he said. “We’ll set him up pretty. He lived longest.”

When I put my knees to ground and leaned over the Federal, he lurched up and I reared back.

“My wife,” he whispered. “Write my wife.”

Arch laughed and held in front of me the letter he had ransacked.

“This must be from her. I can’t read to tell.”

I pinned Black John’s sermon to the Federal’s tunic. He was flat again but breathing.

When I stood Arch said, “Read me this letter, Dutchy.”

“That’s his letter,” I said.

“Was,” said Arch. “I want to hear you read it.”

“I don’t think I care to.”

“Oh, is that so?” drawled Arch. His eyes sank behind his lids and his mouth hung open. “I think if you think a little more, Dutchy, that you’ll think you do want to read me it. Right now, too.”

“Yes,” said Pitt Mackeson. “Why, there might be secrets in it. Read it at us.”

I scented trouble with my comrades if I showed a dainty spirit here. The prospect was not delicious.

The script on the letter had bold girlish leaps and bounds to it, with circles above the I’s. It was addressed to Corporal Miller Eustis.

I began to read the letter aloud, and acted as if I enjoyed the process. The first many lines were without secrets, and mainly contained a young wife’s version of everyday events in Mount Vernon, Iowa. It seemed the Methodists wanted a school there to prosper, and the Cedar River had flooded, and old Ben Eustis had snapped a big toe kicking at a growling dog.

A new mood was then hove into the letter, and the wife said she loved this pink thing on the dirt before me with a devotion that would not wane.

The boys chuckled at this, as though the love of a Yankee woman had no merit. But I was envious in a way. There was a straight-ahead womanness to this author, and I found it admirable.

Eustis, the Federal, had lost where he was and spoke to people who were not nearby. He said friendly things to them. It was good that his soul had started aloft, for there was a secret in this letter that made me ashamed.

“ ‘Miller, Miller,’ ” I read, “ ‘I miss you so. I miss your cool brow and warm brown eyes. The way your cheeks crease when you smile. It makes me crazy, but I most miss your tender red-faced turtle head atop that sweet length of neck. I dream of petting him so special that he drools into my palm and I lick my fingers for a taste of you.’ ”

The boys about shattered themselves with rude laughter upon hearing this.

“My Lord,” said Arch, all manner of unpleasant glee reflected in his face. “Them Yank gals! Them Yank gals! Why, only a whore would say that.”

The Federal now thrashed about some. He may have understood. It was pitiful.

“No southern woman would say such a thing,” Pitt Mackeson said. “Ho, ho! I cain’t wait to be in charge of Iowa!”

I couldn’t stand it. The Federal gurgled and the boys said, “Tender turtle head! Tender turtle head!” real loud.

So I shot him where he lay and put a period to the letter. My act was sudden and it stalled the boys’ laughter.

I walked off with my Colt cocked and my step steady.

Not a word was said to me.


Later on I lounged about, trying to dredge up the tart taste of a jenniton apple in my memory, and the perfumed-sweat smell of real ladies waltzing all night with someone else at a levee dance, and the gushing warmth I’d always felt when Asa Chiles had tousled my hair and called me lucky.

But all that past was a sluggish slough, and I could not flow it up to me at all.

My thoughts were just of now or tomorrow.

Jack Bull Chiles was near me but did not speak for a great stretch of time. He had been a bystander to the day but never an active part of it.

“Say, Jake,” he eventually said, “what are you knowing?”

“I feel I am knowing too much.”

“Ah. Well, forget it. Throw it down.”

“Once you are knowing it, that is hard to do.”

“Oh, hell, Jake. Too much knowledge is only a form of torture. You can do nothing with it but recognize a wider variety of agonies.”

As a philosopher my near brother was aimed in always on the practical. If a notion will pass the night for you, and lead you into another day, then believe it.

“Dogs fight,” I said. “We fight, as well. It could be we settle too many squabbles by the dog method.”

“Hah,” Jack Bull said. “Hah, young Roedel, you are sounding like some terrifically moustached old kraut groveler at this moment.” He slapped a hand on my boot. “And that is not you. That is not you. You are an American.”

I felt like this meant I had the farm but not the crop.

There would be more harsh errands to be done, this I knew, and I would do them. I knew that as well. I was in this fight to fight.

“We could have merely shot them,” I said. “No gain would have been missed if we had merely shot them instead of whipping them raw.”

Jack Bull called up a glob of crud and spit it out. He rubbed his nose and looked away, then shrugged and looked back.

“That was not the plan,” he said. “There may seem to be no rhyme to it, but that was just plain old not the plan.”

What else could I say but, “You are right.”